Peace Must Begin Before Violence - A Message from the Founder & Executive Lead
Today, on the International Day of Peace, I find myself thinking less about the word peace and more about the places where it should exist — but too often does not.
Peace should exist in a child's classroom.
It should exist within the walls of our homes.
It should exist between a husband and wife.
Between neighbours.
Within our communities.
It should exist when a citizen encounters the institutions established to protect them.
And yet, for millions of people around the world, the very places that should represent safety have become places of fear.
I understand something about that.
My commitment to peace did not begin in a conference room or emerge solely from academic study.
Part of it was shaped by my experiences in Nigeria, where I witnessed and personally experienced what can happen when systems and institutions that should protect human dignity instead become sources of fear and harm.
Years later, motherhood would teach me another lesson about peace.
I watched my own child experience bullying in a place where a child should have felt safe enough to learn, grow, make friends and simply be a child.
As a mother, there is a particular kind of pain in watching someone you love encounter a world you cannot completely shield them from.
But those experiences also forced me to think more deeply.
What happens inside a human being before they hurt another person?
What happens to the child who learns that humiliation is power?
What happens to the adult who carries unresolved pain into a marriage, a workplace or a community?
What happens when prejudice is inherited rather than questioned?
What happens when violence becomes normal?
And what happens when people become so accustomed to the suffering of others that they simply stop seeing it?
These questions eventually became inseparable from the work I do today.
Because peace is not only about what happens between nations.
Sometimes peace is a little girl being able to walk into school without being afraid.
Sometimes it is a woman being able to sleep in her own home without fear of the person sleeping beside her.
Sometimes it is a man being allowed to acknowledge his pain without being told that vulnerability makes him weak.
Sometimes it is a family being free to practise their religion without persecution — while recognising that freedom of religion must never become a licence to terrorise, coerce, intimidate or deny another person the same freedom of conscience.
Sometimes peace is having the freedom to live according to your faith while allowing your neighbour the freedom to live according to theirs.
And sometimes peace requires recognising that when we make another nation our home, we may bring with us our faith, our culture, our language, our traditions and the beautiful parts of our heritage, while respecting the constitutional order and laws of the society we have joined.
Integration should not require the erasure of identity.
But neither should cultural or religious identity be used to impose coercive parallel rules upon others or to diminish the rights and protections that belong equally to every person under the law.
A peaceful, pluralistic society requires something from all of us:
The freedom to remain who we are, alongside the responsibility to respect the rights, dignity and freedoms of those who are not like us.
Sometimes peace is a person being able to disagree without being dehumanised.
Sometimes it is a child growing up without learning to hate another child because of their religion, ethnicity, nationality, culture or circumstances.
And for millions caught in violence and conflict around the world, peace is even more fundamental.
It is waking up and knowing that your family is still alive.
It is having a home to return to.
It is food.
It is safety.
It is dignity.
It is the possibility of tomorrow.
This is why, at the International Peace Research Institute and Forums (IPRIF), we believe that the work of peace must reach both systems and people.
We need institutions that protect human dignity.
We need communities capable of dialogue across difference.
We need research that helps us understand the conditions that create and sustain conflict.
We need the rule of law applied with fairness and respect for human rights.
We need accountability when harm occurs.
But we must also pay attention to the human foundations of peace.
Self awareness.
Empathy.
Emotional regulation.
Accountability.
Reflection.
Responsibility.
The ability to recognise the humanity of someone who is different from us.
Because wars may be fought with weapons, but the conditions that allow human beings to harm one another often begin much earlier — in what we learn, what we tolerate, what we normalise, how we perceive others and how we respond when we are hurt.
That is why I believe peacebuilding must begin before violence.
Before hatred becomes ideology.
Before prejudice becomes behaviour.
Before hurt becomes retaliation.
Before faith is manipulated into a justification for harming another human being.
Before cultural difference becomes a reason to deny someone else's freedom.
Before another generation inherits conflicts it did not create.
Today, I am thinking about the women, men and children whose lives are unfolding in places where peace should have found them.
Those living through war.
Those experiencing violence behind closed doors.
Those being bullied in classrooms.
Those facing discrimination.
Those persecuted because of what they believe — or because they choose not to believe.
Those displaced from everything familiar.
Those carrying wounds no one around them can see.
And those quietly choosing, every day, not to allow what happened to them to determine what they will do to someone else.
Perhaps some of the most courageous acts of peace will never make the news.
A person choosing not to retaliate.
A parent refusing to pass prejudice to a child.
A young person questioning hatred they inherited.
A person of faith defending another person's freedom to believe differently.
A newcomer embracing a new home without believing that doing so requires abandoning everything about the home they came from.
Someone acknowledging that they were wrong.
Two people choosing dialogue over hostility.
A community deciding that difference does not have to mean division.
These choices may appear small beside the enormous conflicts confronting our world.
But I do not believe they are insignificant.
Peace begins with people.
And if violence can be learned, normalised and passed from one generation to another, then surely we must have the courage to ask whether peace can also be intentionally taught, practised and passed on.
That is the work to which I remain committed.
On this International Day of Peace, my hope is not simply for a world without war.
It is for homes in which people feel safe.
Schools in which children belong.
Communities in which differences do not erase dignity.
Societies where freedom of religion means freedom for everyone, not domination by anyone.
Nations where constitutional rights and the rule of law protect people across differences of faith, culture and origin.
Institutions worthy of the trust placed in them.
And a generation of young people equipped not merely to inherit our world, but to make it more peaceful than they found it.
Peace must be something we negotiate between nations.
But it must also be something we cultivate within people.
And perhaps that is where some of our most important work begins.
Somtochukwu Ezenwaji
Founder & Executive Lead
International Peace Research Institute and Forums (IPRIF)